Increase in Americans accessing social networking sites via smartphones
A new study on social networking access via mobiles has found that 30.8% of US smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January 2010, up 22.5% year on year.
The comScore research also reveals that access to Facebook via mobile browsers grew 112% in the past year, while Twitter experienced a 347% increase.
Mark Donovan, comScore, said: “Social networking remains one of the most popular and fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile web.
“Social media is a natural sweet spot for mobile since mobile devices are at the center of how people communicate with their circle of friends, whether by phone, text, email, or, increasingly, accessing social networking sites via a mobile browser.”
In January 2010, 11.1% of all US mobile phone users accessed a social networking site via mobile browser, an increase of 4.6 percentage points from the previous year.
| Percent of Subscribers Accessing Social Networking via Mobile Browser | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan-09 | Jan-10 | Point Change | |
| All Mobile Phones | 6.50% | 11.10% | 4.6 |
| Smartphone | 22.50% | 30.80% | 8.3 |
| Feature Phone | 4.50% | 6.80% | 2.3 |
Recent research from Ruder Finn found that Americans are spending an average of 2.7 hours on the mobile internet each day.
It showed that 91% of US mobile phone users go online to socialise compared to only 79% of traditional desktop users.
At the start of February, Nielsen reported that the amount of time spent on social networking sites by consumers worldwide rose by 82% year on year in December 2009.
Global consumers spent an average of five hours, 35 minutes and five seconds on social networking sites in December 2009, said Nielsen, up from three hours, three minutes and 54 seconds a year previously.